March 1, 1980: NBC, still not recovered from a disastrous 1979 that included the Love Boat ripoff Supertrain, the Animal House ripoff Brothers & Sisters, and the Diff'rent Strokes spinoff Hello, Larry!, debuts Pink Lady.
The Japanese duo Pink Lady -- Mitsuyo "Mie" Nemoto, and Keiko "Kei" Masuda, both then 22 years old -- was massively popular in Japan, and even enjoyed a hit in the U.S. with the English-language song "Kiss in the Dark." A television variety show for the duo was proposed and swiftly approved.
The show's developers, Sid and Marty Krofft, specialized in Saturday morning kids' shows. They pursued the project under the erroneous assumption that the stars spoke both English and Japanese. They were teamed up with Jeff Altman, a 28-year-old standup comedian. Together, they would do skits, sometimes with guest stars, including a pre-Ernest P. Worrell Jim Varney, and sing disco songs. At the end of every show, Mie and Kei would entice Jeff, fully clothed and not fully willingly, into a hot tub.
When the linguistic reality became apparent, network executives insisted that Mie and Kei not only perform their English dialog phonetically, but also sing in English. The resulting clumsy diction compounded the show's other problems. They tried big-name guest stars, costing NBC a lot of money:
* Episode 1: Miss America Pageant host Bert Parks, The Jeffersons star Sherman Hemsley, and rock band Blondie.
* Episode 2: Dallas star Larry Hagman (7 days from his character J.R. Ewing getting shot), comedy legend Sid Caesar, and singers Donny Osmond and Teddy Pendergrass.
* Episode 3: Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner (who did not offer Mie and Kei money to pose in his magazine), B.J. and the Bear star Greg Evigan, and rock band Cheap Trick.
* Episode 4: Caesar again, Blondie again, Lorne Greene (the Bonanza star was then starring in the Battlestar Galactica sequel Galactica 1980), and Brady Bunch star Florence Henderson.
* Episode 5: Comedy legends Jerry Lewis and Red Buttons, and rock star Alice Cooper.
Despite all this, the series did poorly, and was cancelled after just 5 episodes. (The never-aired Episode 6 had Caesar again, singers Roy Orbison and Bobby Vinton, and Real People panelist Byron Allen.) The show became a joke, and even helped to kill the variety show format, a staple of network television since the beginning in the late 1940s.
Altman's career did recover, because NBC late-night host David Letterman liked him, and, between the NBC and the CBS version of his shows, brought him on 45 times.
Having met in 1974, and become stars in Japan in 1976, Mie and Kei had a farewell concert at Korakuen Stadium in Tokyo in 1981. They have had reunions since. Mie later went into acting, married and divorced. Kei became popular in France, and got married, and remains married. Neither had any children. They remain icons in their homeland, but in America, their show remains one of the biggest bombs in TV history.
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March 1, 1980 was a Saturday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. There was 1 game played in the NBA: The New York Knicks beat the New Jersey Nets, 115-108 at Madison Square Garden. As always, the Nets considered the Knicks their arch-rivals, while the Knicks considered the Nets just another team.
There were 8 games played in the NHL:
* The New York Islanders lost to the Detroit Red Wings, 4-3 at the Nassau Coliseum.
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Washington Capitals, 6-3 at the Montreal Forum.
* The Boston Bruins beat the Los Angeles Kings, 4-0 at the Boston Garden.
* The Atlanta Flames beat the Colorado Rockies, 4-1 at The Omni in Atlanta.
* The Philadelphia Flyers and the Toronto Maple Leafs played to a tie, 3-3 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.
* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Minnesota North Stars, 4-1 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
* The Hartford Whalers beat the St. Louis Blues, 6-3 at the St. Louis Arena -- or the Checkerdome, as it was known during the team's ownership by St. Louis-based Ralston Purina, with their "Checkerboard Square" logo.
* The Vancouver Canucks beat the Edmonton Oilers, 5-2 at the Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton.
* And the New York Rangers, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Buffalo Sabres, the Quebec Nordiques and the Winnipeg Jets were not scheduled.
And in English soccer, North London team Arsenal went to the Midlands, and beat Stoke City, 3-2 at the Victoria Ground in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.
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